Fraud trial takes aim at Chicago patronage

Four ex-officials deny doling out jobs based on clout.

Four ex-officials deny doling out jobs based on clout.

May 10, 2006

CHICAGO (AP) -- Hiring records were shredded to keep federal investigators from learning which employees on the city payroll landed their jobs through political connections, prosecutors say. Officials allegedly laughed among themselves about the idea of throwing the storage drive of a city computer into Lake Michigan. And a former personnel director at the city sewer department told prosecutors that her predecessor gave her some advice as he went out the door: "Deny everything. Deny, deny, deny." It's not a pretty picture prosecutors plan to paint at the fraud trial of Mayor Richard M. Daley's former patronage director, Robert Sorich, and three other ex-officials. They are accused of illegally scheming to dole out city jobs to applicants based on their political connections, or what Chicago likes to call clout. The four men have denied any wrongdoing. Their attorneys are expected to argue that what the defendants did was standard operating procedure. Jury selection is set to begin today. Despite the best efforts of reformers, the rewarding of political loyalists with jobs on the city payroll has a long and rich history in The City That Works. Ward leaders, union bosses and other political bigwigs dispense jobs to political foot soldiers who ring doorbells and get out the vote, rain or shine. Democratic precinct workers still ride the city's powder-blue sanitation trucks and hold down hundreds of other jobs, from the sewer system to O'Hare Airport. The problem is that a federal court in 1972 barred city officials from firing their employees for political reasons and in 1983 extended that to include hiring. The so-called Shakman Decree, named for Michael L. Shakman, a Chicago lawyer who sued over the city's patronage practices, applies to all but a small number of policymaking jobs.